The recent trend towards the miniaturization of electronic circuits is driven by consumer demand for smaller and light-weight electronic devices such as cellular phones and portable computers. Often, the heaviest component in an electronic device is the battery. Smaller batteries are able to provide less power. As batteries become smaller, integrated circuits (ICs) need lower working voltages and power consumption to prevent the battery from discharging too rapidly. As appliances and circuit designs continue to decrease in size and increase in speed, the need for low power, low noise, current efficient filter circuits increases.
One configuration for a continuous time filter having a transconductor needs tuning to accommodate for resistive/capacitive (RC) effects and components of the circuitry. Transconductance (G.sub.m) is defined as the proportionality constant that is a function of the output signal current component and the instantaneous input voltage of the transconductor.